{"id":528,"date":"2007-03-01T21:55:48","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T05:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=528"},"modified":"2007-03-01T21:55:48","modified_gmt":"2007-03-02T05:55:48","slug":"benni-dresses-up-as-boris-becker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/benni-dresses-up-as-boris-becker\/","title":{"rendered":"Benni Dresses Up As Boris Becker"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This is the first installment of a weekly column following Benjamin Becker\u2019s progress on the ATP tour. This is not a Benjamin Becker fan site, we\u2019ll trash anyone given the opportunity (constructively, of course). The idea is to follow the progress of one player on the tour as an ongoing serial biography.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is a serial biography? Think of it like this. Every week Sports Illustrated arrives at your door and within its pages you can read about the latest escapades of Manny Ramirez, mercurial outfielder for the Red Sox. Or you can read about football player Pacman Jones\u2019 role in a triple shooting at a strip club in Las Vegas during the NBA All-Star game. Or you can read about Peyton Manning finally winning a Super Bowl after years of criticism for coming up short in big games.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading about Peyton Manning since he was a college quarterback at the University of Tennessee. Even then he couldn\u2019t win the big game, he never beat Florida. I\u2019ve followed him from frustration to a Super Bowl victory in real time weekly episodes for over ten years and that is what I call a serial biography.<\/p>\n

Benjamin (Benni) Becker is still at the beginning of his professional tennis career so let\u2019s see how he got where he is. I first met Becker at a challenger tournament<\/a> in Valencia in April 2006. I\u2019d read an article in the New York Times about older foreign students winning NCAA tennis championships and I went to the tournament to see if I could find any college players willing to comment on the controversy.<\/p>\n

I ended up sitting next to Becker\u2019s host family and they mentioned that he\u2019d played at Baylor University and had problems with the NCAA. I didn\u2019t realize it at the time but his name had been in that New York Times article because he\u2019d won the 2004 NCAA title. He lost the final at Valencia and I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d see him on the ATP tour anytime soon. He had a big serve but he was only 5ft10in so I didn\u2019t think he could consistently pound his first serve and keep it in the court, in fact, he lost the final with poor serving.<\/p>\n

The next time I noticed him he\u2019d qualified into a main tour event in Halle, Germany, his home country. In his very next tournament he qualified into Wimbledon and got to the second round. At Wimbledon, his coach Tarik Benhabiles leaned over to Becker\u2019s manager and told him that Becker could be a top twenty player. I wasn\u2019t so sure and nobody was paying much attention to him, but that was all about to change.<\/p>\n

He qualified into the U.S. Open and made it all the way to the third round where he met America\u2019s tennis hero, Andre Agassi, who was playing his last tournament before retiring. It was Becker\u2019s sixth match of the tournament and fatigue set in by the beginning of the fourth set. He was smart enough to conserve energy by cruising through Agassi\u2019s service games until Agassi served at 5-5. Becker then put all of his energy into breaking Agassi and served out the set to take the match and send Agassi into retirement.<\/p>\n

He lost in the next round to Andy Roddick but he\u2019d gone from a ranking of 198 at Valencia to number 75 in five short months. No more qualifying tournaments for Mr. Becker. Since that time he\u2019s reached three semifinals and is now ranked number 40.<\/p>\n

This year for the first time he played Davis Cup for Germany. During the Davis Cup tie he reached another milestone in his young career: he signed a clothing deal. In a recent interview<\/a> with Bonnie DeSimone, Benni said that it’ll be harder to get over having the same last name as Boris Becker than it will be to get over being known as the last man to beat Agassi. So you have to wonder why he would wear Boris Becker\u2019s clothing line. If Benni goes on to win a few ATP titles and actually get to the top 20, the Agassi trivia question will fade away, but he\u2019ll never come within miles of matching Boris\u2019s career so why cover himself in the man\u2019s clothing? Where\u2019s the upside in that?<\/p>\n

Everyone arrives in the world with a personality and we all develop ways of managing the personalities we\u2019ve been dealt. We may be humble despite harboring delusions of grandeur, that way no one can taunt us if we fail to reach our delusional goals.<\/p>\n

Some of us take the opposite approach. Look at young ATP player Novak Djokovic. He defaulted against Rafael Nadal in a French Open match then sat down in a media session and informed us that he\u2019d been in control of the match despite having lost the first two sets. He also took five injury timeouts while winning a U.S. Open match against Gael Monfils. His liberal interpretation of injury timeout rules led Roger Federer, no less, to call him a \u201cjoke when it comes down to his injuries.\u201d Djokovic makes a point of upsetting a high ranked opponent then forcing himself to rise to the challenge next time they meet. He raises the stakes then dares himself to meet the call.<\/p>\n

It works for Djokovic. He\u2019s number 14 in the world and rising. I might be overstating my case here but Benni does not seem like the kind of guy who would make life difficult for himself. In the Bonnie De Simone article mentioned above, Benni\u2019s college coach said that he was \u201cshy, listless and ambivalent\u201d when he arrived at Baylor University. O.k., then why saddle yourself with the specter of your country\u2019s greatest tennis idol, Boris Becker, when you\u2019re already 25 years old, new on the tour, and fighting your way up the rankings? Why make life difficult for yourself?<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s the only clothing deal Benni was offered and he\u2019s smart to make money while he can. Apparel companies prefer signing young and upcoming stars – Boris himself signed a clothing deal with Ellesse when he was a promising 15 years old – but it doesn\u2019t seem like a smart strategy to me.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see what happens in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This is the first installment of a weekly column following Benjamin Becker\u2019s progress on the ATP tour. This is not a Benjamin Becker fan site, we\u2019ll trash anyone given the opportunity (constructively, of course). The idea is to follow the progress of one player on the tour as an ongoing serial biography.] What is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atp-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}